Our ambassadors are key community members who help us bring DevOpsNotDead to cities around the world.
Know someone who should be an ambassador? Nominate them here!
Kyle Forster
Founder & CEO
RunWhen
Global
What started as RunWhen sponsoring a handful of events quickly grew into a long term partnership, an...What started as RunWhen sponsoring a handful of events quickly grew into a long term partnership, and it's been genuinely fun to watch these conferences expand into multiple cities across Europe and the US while keeping the same thoughtful, practitioner driven feel. I've known Mark and Miko for a while, and working with people who truly care about the community they're building makes this even better. We're excited to keep tightening the partnership between RunWhen and the conference series and to see what this community evolves into next.Read more
Most events feel like everyone is waiting for permission to relax. A playful RPG setting gives people that permission right away. It melts the formal vibe, makes conversations easier to start, and turns strangers into party members instead of awkward hallway passers. The logistics become smoother because the mood is warmer, the crowd is looser, and people are simply more willing to engage.
DevOps didn’t disappear. It grew up. DevOpsNotDead exists for practitioners who are still doing the work, building systems that have to survive real users, real failures, and real constraints. It is a space for honest conversations about modern DevOps without hype cycles, empty optimism, or pretending the work is easy. Building systems is creative, collaborative, and sometimes heroic in small, unglamorous ways.
me like Defopz No'Dedd. no human flesh for lunch but gud cofee.... talks not feyk shine, folk say when thing broke an why, stronk commyouneaty vibes. me respect dat.... funny stuff make brain less hurt, feel less corpo cave. some talk too smart, some hit good.... Defopz not ded. still crawl, still fight.
Every time someone claims DevOps is over, another team somewhere is accidentally summoning a production-level dragon because their build scrolls weren’t updated. DevOps is the art of keeping the kingdom running without the castle catching fire. As long as apps exist, someone has to tame the beasts behind the curtain.
You’ve got your tanky SREs, your glass-cannon developers, your support clerics, and that one QA wizard who knows way too much about your doomed legacy systems. Putting everyone in an actual fantasy setting just completes the metaphor we’ve all been living anyway.
Nothing heals deployment trauma like framing it as a cursed artifact misbehaving. Observability becomes scrying. CI jobs become enchanted runes. Outages become boss fights. Suddenly, the hard stuff feels like an adventure, not punishment. And that’s exactly why DevOps isn’t dead at all. It just needs a better questline.
I have not heard the talks yet, but the signal is already clear. DevOps Not Dead gathers practitioners, not echoes. The intent is sharp, the voices chosen with care, and the current feels alive. This does not feel like a revival. It feels like a beginning.
